lhooq

Wow. The grainy texture of the surface and the grooves (spiral?) of the subdials really sell that Paul Newman, Freddy!

ZK: Congrats on the 7032! sgtuk: I like that Frederique Constant. It reminds me of a Movado Datron El Primero that I nearly won. VC for today:

I've bought many things from these guys. Always good service. Also, it looks like a 30-minute movement. Count the teeth.

Good stuff, eray! Nice texture and color on that dial.

Thanks! It's the observatory in the middle of the University of Toronto campus.

My PAM's bigger than that Smart.

"That's not an M3! That's a Pontiac Grand Am with a body kit!"

Return of the mesh.

Terrific shot of a lovely Bund, Eunomians!

Love the way that bezel looks! Junghans for today.

I'll admit that it's a contributing factor.

No Paul Newman here, but it continues the day's theme:

jmb's currently fitting a gen dome onto my FAP 6239 Redux. But I'm passing on the genuine pump pushers!

At those prices, brother, you have to wait!

I remember a while back when one of the big dealers bought an early Sub on eBay for something like $20-30K, then sold it on VRM for >$50K within a couple of days. Arbitrage works both ways.

tomhorn/alligoat: Yes, that's the one. It's not a terrific dial (ingod44 would be better if you didn't need an 'Explorer'), but it has fewer sins than the last Yuki batch. Some of the fonts remind me of the MBW 1016 dials, actually, so I do wonder... Mr. Doug: What's special about that dial is that it's a gilt. Worth $2900? Slightly possible, if you had a correct-year 1016 with a totally trashed dial that needed replacement. But not likely.

Clutch the pearls! Thanks for the update, TC!

M, this one's not very good. It's got balloon-like numerals that are set too far into the dial, and the text isn't proportioned properly. There's a dial on eBay right now that's considerably better (despite odd fonts), and selling for $110. Also, 162xx is a completely different case from 16xxx.

As with companies like post-Jobs Apple or Bangle-era BMW, it's hard to question their, er, questionable decisions, because they can easily point to their success. Apple's market cap is ridiculously huge, while flame-surfaced sedans broke sales records. Right now, I'm reading a lot of speculation that the marketing wizards at Rolex are holding off from releasing a red/blue ceramic bezel in order to build demand, skim the early adopters who just have to have a two-tone bezel, &c. &c. I would believe that if I could point to a recent Rolex release that made me say, "That's exactly what we've been waiting for!" I certainly can't think of one. I agree with you that they really need to consider the counterfactual: Make what people are asking for, for a change, and see how that works out.

Not from Baselworld.

I struggle to understand how they came up with an "ice blue-on-chestnut" Daytona.

Boring releases this year.